When to actually buy a laptop
Release cycles, back-to-school promos and the quiet March dip nobody talks about — mapped across four years of data.
Daniel ReyesProduct Lead
Laptop pricing is more predictable than almost any other category, because it is anchored to a release cadence that manufacturers barely vary from year to year.
The headline finding: the cheapest reliable window for a current-generation machine is the last two weeks of March, not Black Friday. Late-March discounting clears inventory ahead of spring refreshes, and because it is not a marketing event, the reductions are real rather than theatrical.
Back-to-school promotions in August look larger but are usually bundled — a discounted accessory, a gift card, an extended warranty. Normalised to cash value, the average August saving lands about four points below March.
If you need a machine outside those windows, buy the previous generation in the fortnight after a new one is announced. That is the single sharpest drop in the series, averaging 22% within ten days, and the hardware is rarely meaningfully worse.
The exception is any configuration that a manufacturer discontinues rather than replaces. Those go up, not down, once stock thins — which is why our forecast model treats inventory velocity as a separate signal from price trend.
